Sookie Audio Books

True Blood Video

Sookie short stories

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Love it or not, HBO's Southern gothic series à la vampire, "True Blood," is a big flashing sign of the times (Sundays, 9-10 p.m. ET). In a little more than a century, we have gone from the Victorian shocker "Dracula"—in which taboo eroticism had to be disguised as horror—to an era when a TV creator's biggest nightmare is finding a taboo left to violate.

"True Blood" fits the bill partly in a jokey way, offering the story of backwoods-Louisiana waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) and her vampire boyfriend Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) as if their lovemaking were a socially transgressive act. But not wrong in any way. She's a perky twentysomething, he's a Civil War veteran: What could be more natural than that?